Our website uses cookies to improve your user experience. If you continue browsing, we assume that you consent to our use of cookies. More information can be found in our Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy.

The 20 different ways of using the Twitter favourite button

What is Twitter’s favourite button for, exactly? What does it mean when somebody ‘favourites’ one of your tweets? When and why do you press the button?

There are a variety of reasons why people choose to ‘favourite’ tweets. In fact, I’ve identified 20 different reasons for doing so. If you’re anything like me you’ll use the button in a bunch of ways.

You can be sure that I’ve missed a few things out, so be sure to leave a comment if you use the button in yet another way.

So then, why do people press the favourite button?

By accident

While researching this article I conducted a search on Twitter to find all mentions of ‘favourite button’. It’s absolute carnage out there. I’d say that 95% of tweets on this subject are complaints about clicking the button accidentally. Seems to be affecting Android users, due to the placement of the button alongside the scroll bar.

To like something

What the button was intended for, presumably. An upvote of sorts. I normally award gold stars for obscure references that I understand, for good deeds and right-minded thinking, and for tweets that particularly amuse me.

To dislike something

Ever pressed the favourite button sarcastically? Some tweets and links are so jaw-dropping that you want to put them on a pedestal, to keep in a safe place for all time, and to look at on a rainy day, or when the going gets tough. Other times people will press the button to make their annoyance clear, the equivalent of sarcastic applause.

To bookmark something

One of the more common, more obvious uses.

As a note to self

A couple of nights ago I filed Jamie East’s tweet under ‘favourites’ so that I’d remember to write this article.

To read / watch / access later

I mainly press the favourite button when on the move, and browsing through Twitter via my smartphone. I have a few minutes on the way to work, which isn’t enough time to read all of the interesting links. In any case, small screens aren’t always the best for reading or watching (and some links don’t work on my phone).

To trigger something

The very excellent IFTTT has plenty of recipes to help you to push your favourite tweets left, right and centre. Use Pocket? Evernote? Buffer? Google Drive? Ever considered sending your favourites there? Get creative, and automatically distribute, compile and expand your favourites.

To doff one’s cap

To flirt

To show support

In a fight, for example. Who’s side are you on?

To spread the word

For those who tune into other people’s ‘favourites’, they are like retweets on steroids. Most people take more care over their favourites, compared to normal tweets (which can be entirely throwaway should the mood take you). Pressing the favourite button takes that a little extra cognitive effort. As such, favourites can be more meaningful.

To attract more followers

Favourite somebody’s tweet and you will appear on their radar. Sometimes they’ll follow you.

For motivation

Some players raise their game when the crowd loudly boos. Like this guy.

As a smoke signal

“Keep an eye on my favourites”. It can be useful when you want to wave a flag to friends or colleagues, without having to shout from the rooftops.

To build a personal brand

If you want to be viewed as an expert in a particular subject then you can use the favourite button to curate a list of links to interesting tools, articles, news, videos, stats, etc. Requires discipline!

To provide a glimpse into their personality

Take a look at someone’s tweets and you’ll get some idea of what they’re all about. Look at their favourites and you should really see into their soul. Favourites are often a condensed, noise-free list of the things most important to someone.

To collect and save testimonials

If people say nice things about you or your brand on Twitter then why not hit the favourite button, and start collecting these tweets in one (public) place. Social proof FTW.

Because… spam

There are automated tools for favouriting tweets. I can only guess at how sucky these tools are, but if you automate this sort of thing then you are definitely doing it wrong. Think on.

Are there any other ways of using Twitter’s ‘favourite’ button? Do let me know in the comments area below…

The low-cost clothing brand has entered the top five of the 100 UK retailers on social media for the first time.

According to eDigitalResearch’s Retail Social Media Benchmark, Primark now has almost 2.4m followers on Facebook alone, a steep rise from its reported 700,000 followers just six months ago.

It can be very easy for a high street brand to accrue a high number of followers on any social media platform just through brand identity alone.

However, in order to be an effective driver of traffic to online and offline commerce, brands need to use social media to directly engage with customers through conversation, quality entertaining content and through personalised, always-on customer service.

Therefore a high follower count isn’t necessarily the best metric to gauge whether a brand is ‘doing social media right’. Although the sharp rise in Primark’s social profile is indicative of Primark upping its game considerably.

Let’s take a look at Primark’s Facebook page to see if there’s anything to be learnt from its strategy.

“Come out Vine, the jig is up! Put your hands where I can see them and nobody will get hurt”.

William Miller has recently published a blog post on Socialbakers.com entitled How Instagram Killed Vine for Marketers. In his post Miller, like so many social media grim-reapers before him, has declared the death of Vine with a singular swipe of his scythe.

I enjoy this kind of speculation. Especially when it comes to trends in digital marketing or even technology in general.

From an objective point of view, it’s fascinating to observe the positivity drawn by a new platform in its start-up days, through to the vague grumbles it attracts once it’s past the early majority stage.

Then you know it won’t be long before the race begins to be the first to announce the ‘death’ of that particular platform. We set them up to knock them down.

The BBC and The Guardian are the most dominant UK news outlets in terms of the number of shares on Twitter, according to new data from PeerIndex.

UK Twitter users shared just over 4.2m articles from BBC News in January 2014, which apparently resulted in more than 100bn potential impressions of BBC content to Twitter users globally.

In comparison, content from The Guardian was shared 2.4m times via Twitter while The Telegraph came in third with 913,000 shares.

The research also shows the negative impact that paywalls have on social sharing, as The New York Times is the only paid-for online publications to make the top 10. For more on The NYT’s business model, read our report on its recent native advertising trial.

February 24th 201413:04

Latest

According to a newly-published study published by Pew, nearly three-quarters of Facebook users polled said they didn’t know that Facebook generates and stores data about their interests and traits, and, when they came to learn this, over half indicated that they were uncomfortable with Facebook’s practice.

Mastercard, the third-largest credit card processor in the US, has announced a new policy that will make it more difficult for some businesses to automatically convert free trials into recurring subscriptions.

The water industry has faced huge change in recent years. A rising tide of challenges including climate change, population growth, ageing infrastructure, changing customer expectations and regulatory intervention from Ofwat mean water companies are under pressure to perform.